


Night Windows

by Alethiometric



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Music Prompt: The Weakerthans, Post-Reichenbach, Trigger Warning: Implied Drug Use, Winglock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-06
Updated: 2012-05-06
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alethiometric/pseuds/Alethiometric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The denial drives John mad, but mad's not that horrible as long as people look like angels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Windows

It had been three years since the Fall.

Three years, almost to the day, since John had seen him plummet to his death, coat streaming behind, and he still sometimes woke with the shout in his mouth, curled up tightly behind his tongue so as not to wake the neighbors.

Sometimes there were dark feathers on his sill that vanished in wisps of smoke as soon as he looked away.

Sometimes he would see a flash of a feathery coat around a corner, and run to the end of the road only to see nothing.

He could not live in their old flat anymore, with the horns on the wall and the yellow face eternally smiling and sagging off of peeling wallpaper, unconscious of the bullet holes riddling its forehead. He had moved into a nice flat on the other side of London instead, gotten another job as far away from St. Bart's as he possibly could. Still he saw the wings in reflections on darkened windows, every so often. They’d be just a flash of wool and tweed pattern that always, always failed to lift their bearer up and away from the ground. He had replayed the fall in his mind over and over again, hoping each time for a different conclusion but only ever getting the same—the same crumple to the pavement, the same blood-coated hair and skin, broken blue eyes looking out, unseeing, on the sky.

It was driving him insane, he knew: this constant reanalysis, always the search for a way, any way that Sherlock could have survived. He’d read all the theories online, the ones put forth by that network of internet-addicted teenagers, the ‘Believe In Sherlock’ groups and boards. They would not, could not let it go. Did not believe, even for a moment, that he could have been a fraud—and to be honest with himself, neither could John. Nobody could be that clever. The words like a death knell in his brain.

And the feathers. Always with the feathers. Some people had more of them than others. Some were ragged. Some full and pristine. John didn’t mention them to his therapist; she wouldn’t have believed him anyways if he had said he was seeing wings, for God’s sake. Wings like angels. They even permeated his dreams and memories; he was beginning to remember Sherlock’s wings flapping desperately but being unable to get lift and he kept on falling and—

Stop.

Breathe.

It’s raining when he leaves the flat for the last time. The days would blend, except there are too many cases, too many patients for him to let his mind truly go. Otherwise he might have put a gun to his throat long ago.

Lestrade had started calling on him for help with difficult cases. Perhaps he thought that Sherlock’s intellect would’ve rubbed off on John. Perhaps he was right, at least partially, but John can only notice things; he can’t put them together, spinning connections out of nothingness and binding the facts together. He can only point things out. So far. He gets more observant every time.

Sometimes he wonders if he’s taken over Sherlock’s place with Scotland Yard, but won’t—can’t—pursue that thought any further than the merest abstraction.

That day—or rather evening—is the first time he really begins to understand.

It was getting hard to ignore the wings almost everyone seemed to be sporting. Every time Lestrade spoke, his rustled behind him in a flash of tawny and grey-brown. Donovan’s were gray and stiff. Anderson held grouse-like wings with mottled undercoating. Mrs. Hudson, snow-white. John couldn’t stop shuddering as they moved, not out of repulsion but of consternation, even after two and a half years of seeing feathers everywhere he looked.

The dark primaries on his windowsill that vanished into smoke when he looked weren’t helping either.

He couldn’t go home yet, though. One more walk, perhaps, another visit with Mrs. Hudson. She hadn’t rented 221b to anyone else since Sherlock died—said she was holding it until John wanted to sort through the last of the old stuff, but he knew it was a lie. He hadn’t wanted to, kept putting it off, and one thing turned to another and even now, years after the fact, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to look through half of it. The most he had done was take the head out of the refrigerator.

People ignored him now when he walked. Enough time had passed that he was no longer stopped on the street with questions from journalists. It was better that way.

He stepped up to the door, pulling close to it to get beneath the gable and out of the rain, and was about to unlock when he saw the note.

I’m upstairs, John. Come up.

John blinked at the paper a little, not registering the words. He shrugged. Opened the door. Just another hallucination. That much was clear from the tar-black feather pinning the note to the door by its shaft.

It was only when he set his umbrella down on the table that he noticed the shape standing at the top of the stairs. A moment, a beat of silence, and it turned and walked away, towards the old flat. John followed a moment later, wishing he had brought a weapon: gripping his umbrella tightly because that would have to do. Perhaps he could grab the knife off of the mantelpiece.

Into the flat now, still following the man; John tracked him into the living room, then stopped in the doorway, about to shout. The words died on his lips when he noticed the coat and blue scarf lying on the back of the couch. They didn’t match in his mind with the man’s short ginger hair and running hoodie, but now that he saw it…

He froze, dead still. The figure didn’t turn, didn’t give any sign that it had noticed John’s presence, but the black wings rustled almost nervously, half-folded at his back. John didn’t need to see his face to know. He would not have been able to dream this.

Sherlock turned to look at him, face inscrutable. “Afternoon.”

Frozen. No reaction except to stare. The silence was almost awkward and stretched out for too long. Sherlock watched his face, mouth tight and closed-off, then seemed to wince a little. “Not good?”

“Care to explain?” John said, dangerously calm.

Blue eyes narrowed in confusion. “Explain? Explain what?”

John took three steps and let fly, cracking fist into face and knocking the other man down straight. “You were DEAD, you stupid bloody idiot! You ARE dead! Stop it, stop this—coming back, haunting me!”

Sherlock stared up at him from the floor, one hand pressed to his face. “Don’t be rash, John—just give me a chance to—“

“To what? I gave you chances, Sherlock! I gave you chances over and over to come back out of the shadows, for some sort of, I don’t know, some sort of miracle and now you decide to show up again? For God’s sake, I just stopped seeing you every time I turned around a couple weeks ago! And you still have the gall to show up, you with your damn scarf and coat and those goddamn wings—“

“Wings?”

John stopped cold. “I, I mean—“

“What have you been seeing?” Sherlock was back on interrogation mode now, somehow both familiar and incredibly annoying. “John?”

“It’s fine, it’s nothing.” It wasn’t. If only the wings would stop moving…

“What did Ella put you on?” Sherlock’s standing now, leaning in too close for John, and the doctor is tempted to slug him again.

“Nothing, not anymore. I was recovering.”

One of the black wings brushed him, just a little, as their owner turned on his heel. The contact, despite how faint it was, sent John jumping back. Their coffee table hit the back of his knees, hard, and he stumbled over and down, just about sitting on it. It felt real. He could feel the feathers on his skin, could feel the tingle they left behind.

His own wings broke his fall. He froze. They weren’t visible, being behind his back and all, but he could feel them as sure as he could feel his own legs. He reached one hand behind his back, running fingers through feathers and now thoroughly convinced that he was crazy.

Sherlock was staring at him. “John, what are you doing?”

The wings pushed John back up, aiding him better than a cane ever could. He looked back up at Sherlock, meeting his eyes now. One of his own wings reached out, brown and yellow-golden, and very lightly touched primaries with the other man’s black ones.

“You’re not really here, are you?” John said bitterly, staring into those ice-blue eyes as darkness ate at the edge of his vision. “I’m not seeing you alive. You’ve come for me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, John. I’m here. What did you take?” His voice rose on the last sentence, agitated now. “What did you take?”

“I didn’t—”

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from my dA account. This was written about a month ago.


End file.
